This research attempts to identify the determinants of policy adoption in hopes of gaining some insights into the process of establishing and diffusing the norms embodied in hew policies and administrative directives in large scale organizations. Specifically, our study is concerned with explaining which factors influence the adoption of personnel policies in federal agencies. Given this conceptual orientation, the research design calls for the collection of both organizational and individual data in order to determine what effect structural and psychological variables have on the adoption process. The specific policy that we are studying is the Federal Alcohol Policy which is found in the U.S. Civil Service Commission's Federal Personnel Manual Letter 792-4. The collection of the data entails conducting interviews with some 1300 federal employees, most of which are supervisors, in 74 installations which are subdivisions of the following departments: Justice, Interior, HUD, HEW, Commerce, Treasury, GSA, Agriculture, and transportation. The rationale for focusing on supervisors is that they play an important part in the adoption and the implementation of the alcohol policy. The director of each installation and the alcohol policy coordinator will also be interviewed. The installations are located in three regions: Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. They were selected on the basis of a stratified, systematic sample.